"...difficile est saturam non scribere. Nam quis iniquae
tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se..."
"...it is hard not to write Satire. For who is so tolerant of the unjust City, so steeled, that he can restrain himself... Juvenal, The Satires (1.30-32)
akakyakakyevich@gmail.com

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Interesting times we live in, aren't they?

Well, it has certainly been an interesting few
weeks, as few weeks go, I think.You don’t
generally see the President of the United States of America or his Secretary of
State make complete asses of themselves on live television, to be sure, and you
certainly don’t see both of them make complete asses of themselves on live
television in the same week.You also
don’t find the President of the Russian Federation writing op-ed pieces for the
New York Times every week, especially op-ed pieces in which he chides the
President of the United States of America for calling America exceptional,
invokes the blesses of the Lord upon us all, and makes it clear that he is
laughing up his sleeve at America and the putative leader of the Free World.
The former junior senator from Illinois probably does not recognize the fact
that Tsar Vladimir II is laughing at him, of course; a man of Senator Whilom’s
monumental self-regard cannot process the idea that he might be the object of
fun, or worse yet, mockery, and if the idea did penetrate the mental screen somehow
He would ascribe the cause to racism. Racism is The One’s security blanket, the
all-purpose reason for everything that might conceivably go wrong, although He
will to make it clear that nothing has gone wrong. It would be racist to think something like that, you see.

The month began with our erstwhile Illinois
Incitatus doing His impression of Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty, which I
thought was very good, followed by His impression of Chico Marx telling us all
who are we going to believe, me or your own eyes, an imitation I thought less
than credible, but then few people can do Chico Marx well these days.There was no red line, you see, when it came
to the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria, none whatsoever, or maybe there
was a little red line, but it had nothing to do with anything of any importance.This brought up an interesting discussion of
what exactly a red line actually was, with various and sundry spokespeople
pointing out that red lines are not red lines when soaked first in lemon
vinegar and a nice wine sauce, and then washed with a detergent with bluing for
extra whiteness. This was a wonderful discussion, far more interesting than the
discussion of whether or not the IRS should investigate asparagus farmers for
the right-wing political proclivities of their produce. And then…someone in the
media, oddly enough, produced the videotape of our prairie solon using the
words red line in a sentence that had nothing to do with college basketball and
everything to do with what this our Great Republic would do if the Assad
thugocracy used chemical weapons against its enemies. Faced with the evidence
that He had, however inadvertently, drawn an actual red line, He then said that
he did not build that red line, it was Congress’ red line, although no one had
asked the Congress about red lines one way or the other, and it was the world’s
red line as well, even if no one had consulted the world about the matter.In fact, it was everybody’s red line, yes it
was, just as long as it wasn’t His red line.This argument flew in much the same way that a side of beef pitched out
of a twelfth story window does not, and yes, I did shoplift that bit from
Douglas Adams, who lifted it from P.G. Wodehouse, and thank you for noticing.
So the former junior senator from Illinois began to lay his case for military
action against Syria, recycling President Bush’s arguments about going to war
with Iraq in an apparent attempt to achieve a sustainable green war environment
in the Middle East without anyone noticing that He was using President Bush’s
arguments about going to war with Iraq. I’m not sure why He did that; perhaps
He thought no one would remember a time before He blessed us with His numinous
Presence. It’s as good an explanation as any, I guess.

As is His wont, however, He did mention that He
did not need Congress’ permission to bomb Syria; bombing Syria is one of the
perks of being the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, like unlimited golf
time and free drinks at the White House canteen. The Congress, suitably surprised that The One
was even deigning to notice that they existed, said this interpretation of the
Constitution might not be the case and that they might want to have a chat
about it amongst themselves before committing to anything one way or the
other.His Elective Majesty then declared
that He did not need Congress’ permission to bomb anyone He felt like bombing and
permitted his Secretary of State to make the case for His bombing anyone He felt
like bombing to those parts of the world He does not choose to bomb at this
time.His Secretary of State, a man
borne to the purple heart and married to a ketchup bottle, thereby decreed that
yes, the Leader of the Free World, which is not an amusement park in Edison,
New Jersey, but is a strip club/auto repair shop in Spokane, Washington, or so
I hear, did not need Congress’ authorization to bomb whoever He felt like
bombing. The Secretary delivered this bit of bilious Botoxed bombast, a
Secretarial specialty for those of you not paying attention, even as His
Kumquat in Chief was strolling around the White House grounds ignoring the Do
Not Walk on the Grass signs and deciding that instead of not going to Congress
to get their unnecessary authorization to bomb anyone He felt like bombing, He
would go to Congress for their unnecessary authorization to bomb anyone He felt like
bombing.And all of God’s children would
say, Amen, but to do that everyone would have to be on the same page in the missal,
which doesn’t seem to be the case here.

Well, the Secretary of the untaxed swift boats,
which sounds a bit Homeric, now that I give it some thought, disguised his
nonplussment, if that’s even a word, and began to make the case for
Congressional authorization without so much as batting an eyelash, an act that may
well be impossible for the Secretary to perform until the shots wear off. In addition to this, the avatar of Jake Lingle proclaimed on one of the Sunday morning chat shows that the former junior senator from
Illinois had wrought a political miracle by making the Republicans responsible
for another war if they voted yes and responsible for mass slaughter if they
voted no.Mr. Lingle’s avatar, a greasy
Chicago political hack who would give greasy Chicago political hackery a bad
name if such a thing were possible, rubbed his hands with glee at the prospect
I've just mentioned, or he did, until it became apparent that the Democrats in
Congress wouldn’t support Senator Whilom’s urge to bomb Syria either. Such an
outright repudiation would be an outrage—everyone who was anyone in the
Democratic leadership said so—a massive political calamity that would undermine
The One’s credibility throughout the world, as if He hadn’t done that Himself
by selling Twizzlers to everyone involved and then claiming that the item in
question was cotton candy. Oh, what to do, what to do, boys and girls?!Illinois Jones is about to fall into a vast
pit of GOP snakes! How will He make His escape?The audience cowers in fear as Our Hero dangles at the edge of the abyss,
trying to think of a way out of His predicament.

And then, miracle of miracles, the cavalry comes
riding over the hill to save the day…well, okay, if you want to be technical
about this, it’s not the US Cavalry, God bless every man jack of them, it’s the
Cossack cavalry, with a shirtless Tsar Vladimir II in the lead. I wonder why
Vladimir Vladimirovich hates shirts so much. You’d think a Russian would love
shirts, what with the Russian winter lasting for fourteen months out of the
year. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes, I suppose.In any case, Vlad comes sweeping in and
offers Illinois Jones a deal: Syria will eliminate the chemical weapons it used
to say it didn’t have, young Bashar Assad will not face a war crimes tribunal,
the United States will not have to bomb anyone, and the United Nations will
come in and do something suitably vague and high-minded.Our erstwhile Illinois Incitatus gives the
deal the cold once over and immediately accepts, as it gets Him away from the
snake pit with His swash, His buckle, and His backside intact, in a sideways
sort of fashion. Of course, the downside to the deal is that Vlad looks like
the Man on the Strong Horse, the Iranians think that our Elective Majesty is a
weak sister, and all those Syrian rebels attending English as a Second Language
classes now know the meaning of the expression, getting the shaft. On the
upside, though, after years in reruns the Not Ready for Prime Time Players are
back on live television and Our Leader, the Duke of Plaza-Toro, can go back to
perfecting his golf game. Makes you feel all warm and mushy inside, don’t it?